Sunday, November 02, 2008

Butz and Hargis Expose Themselves to Ridicule

Even by 'revisionist' standards, the latest claim made by Butz, and defended by his dullard lapdog Hargis, beggars belief. In this astonishingly ill-educated essay, Butz claims that, when Himmler wrote his famous "keine liquidierung" note, "Himmler was either reporting to Heydrich that the transport had not been canceled, or in some sense discussed the fact with him." In the crazy world of Butz, 'liquidated' therefore meant 'canceled' when used by the head of the SS.

You would think that Hargis would steer clear of this idiocy, but instead he has placed both feet firmly in his mouth. He has devoted this CODOH thread to the issue and then ignored or deleted the multiple objections thrown up by his brethren, especially Wahrheit's excellent points about chronology (Himmler's note was written after the transport had already arrived in Riga) and Himmler's reprimand of Jeckeln. Fortunately, this thread at RODOH has captured the discussion as it has developed, and preserved Warheit's deleted rebuttal.

Let us firstly summarize the linguistic issues. Hargis uses the 'Scheiffler-Weiss German and English Dictionary', 1981, to claim that liquidierung means "to wind up pending affairs." However, it is clear from on-line dictionaries that this function of the word only applies to the liquidation of a company by a financial liquidator. Googling the quoted text "wind up existing affairs" brings up only the CODOH thread and this Korean guide to the role of a liquidator. Butz and Hargis must therefore know that they are abusing a financial linguistic application by imposing it on Himmler's far more obvious meaning. This is recognized on the CODOH thread by 'Vlad', who posted on date and time stamp "Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:29 pm" that:

Butz's German seems to be very limited indeed, otherwise he wouldn't have come up with such a far-fetched "theory". One doesn't liquidate trains or transports, neither in English nor in German.

However, whereas Vlad seems prepared to put this down to poor German, Butz has no such excuse, because he says he discussed his essay with German-born Germar Rudolf before the latter was deported. We can imagine how Germar must have raised his eyebrows in disbelief before encouraging Butz to blunder on with his project anyway. Such is Rudolf's dishonesty and Butz's willingness to deny linguistic evidence.

The real meaning of 'liquidierung' in SS usage is made clear in Longerich's 'Glossary' prepared for the Lipstadt trial:

1.5 For example, in January 1942 the head of the Gestapo, Müller, issued an ordinance according to which terms such as "liquidation" (Liquidation) and "liquidate" (liquidieren) were words "used by the Soviet rulers". In German reports, essays, etc. such terms should only be used in this connection.

As jnovitz acknowledges on the CODOH thread, Goebbels imported this Soviet usage into his Total War speech, when he said:

The German people, in any event, is unwilling to bow to this danger. Behind the oncoming Soviet divisions we see the Jewish liquidation commandos, and behind them terror, the specter of mass starvation and complete anarchy

Similarly, Vlad points out that:

Cornelia Schmitz-Berning in her Vokabular des Nationalsozialismus (p. 390) quotes a press directive, issued in November 1941, in which the replacement of standrechtliche Erschießung [shooting under martial law] by liquidieren was censored as "highly inappropriate".

Butz and Hargis really should have thought this through before subjecting themselves and their movement to this public embarrassment.